Jim Hamilton has a a great post on the fundamentals underlying his correct prediction of falling gasoline prices. Lots of great information about the connection between spot and forward prices, and what you can infer from forward prices about expectations. He also discusses the reasons for this relatively precipitous decline in retail gasoline prices. So …
Lynne Kiesling Mike’s post about ethanol and fuel economy raises an important general point: fuels and the technologies for burning them are strong complements. Engines are not one-size-fits-all fits with different fuels, but are highly customized. We see this in history, too. The move from the use of whale oil for lighting to kerosene for …
Lynne Kiesling Hate the thought of checking your bag just for some shampoo, toothpaste and moisturizer? Enter My Wet Stuff, a new company devoted to delivering travel-size toiletries to your hotel. As we ramp up a brand-new company for a brand-new market need, deliveries will begin on September 29, 2006. After that, only 3 days …
Travel Toiletry Entrepreneurship: I Knew It Would Happen Read More »
Lynne Kiesling I was just saying to a couple of colleagues yesterday that one of the things we take almost as axiomatic in economics-that prices are a function of expectations of future supply and demand-is little understood by laypeople. Oil markets recently have provided a good example of that interaction. Take, for example, this Bloomberg …
Lynne Kiesling I’ve been so busy that I’ve even missed the opportunity for some shameless self-promotion. Mary Wisniewski wrote an article in Thursday’s Sun-Times about recently-passed legislation that will require Illinois utilities to offer a real-time pricing contract to their residential customers. The legislation requires the Illinois Commerce Commission to make a determination of whether …
Lynne Kiesling High prices and profits in the oil industry are inducing further exploration. This exploration is paying off in the Gulf of Mexico (WSJ, subscription required), where the largest new discoveries since the north slope of Alaska are likely. At a time when energy companies are struggling to replace reserves, the Gulf’s deep-water lower-tertiary …
Shifting the Oil Supply Curve to the Right in the Gulf of Mexico Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Nick Gillespie at Reason has an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times decrying the nanny-state activities of Chicago’s City Council: But it turns out that Chicago is a sissy town because that “stormy, husky, brawling … City of the Big Shoulders,” in Carl Sandburg’s evocative 1916 poem, seems hellbent on putting a chokehold …
Nick Gillespie: Chicago City Council is Trying to Out-california California Read More »
Lynne Kiesling I haven’t had time to read and think systematically about California’s proposed carbon policy, but I encourage you to read this post and this post at Environmental Economics, as well as the comments on them. I’ll probabably have something to say later, and it will likely riff off of John’s two posts.
Lynne Kiesling Usually in the week before Labor Day we see gas prices rise relative to their mid-summer levels. Not this year: gas prices are declining, to the lowest nominal levels since November 2005 (WaPo, registration required). Unlike normal summers when the seasonal change in demand elasticity provides the dominant effect on prices, this year …
Lynne Kiesling Today’s Wall Street Journal has an article on Stockholm’s road congestion pricing pilot experiment (subscription required). Stockholm is a city of islands, so the road network is subtantially a set of bridges. Not surprisingly, congestion often ensues. From January through July, Stockholm tested one of the world’s most sophisticated traffic-management systems as part …
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